Keeping up the excitement

It keeps you young

Our journey through life is an incredibly long one.

When I was born, World War 2 had just finished. At the age of two I was taken for a few months to my mother’s home town of Bendigo, Australia, and the milk was still delivered by horse and cart.

The house in Vanguard St, Nelson, which we moved to when I was three, had no hot water heating except for the wetback on the wood range. In the weekends my father would stoke the fire so hard that the water would start boiling in the tank up in the ceiling (or maybe it was on the roof). We’d be asked to take a bath, just to relieve the pressure.

My Australian grandparents visited when I was eight and bought both my older brother and I brand new bikes, costing an incredible 20 pounds each. There wasn’t much traffic in Vanguard St then, or in the other streets of town, so I could confidently bike off to the swimming pool or the library on my own.

Strangely, it’s the same swimming pool I use now, nearly 70 years later.

When I became a pseudo-adult, more than 50 years ago, I became interested in pottery.

The first four pots I ever had fired were in a kiln at Westlake Boys High School in 1971. By that time, I’d started teaching at the nearby Glenfield College. 

I’d bought a big wooden kick wheel and made pots in the sunroom of the derelict beachfront house in Campbells Bay I rented with my first wife Helen for the princely sum of $10 a week. 

We were in the second row back, but had a narrow path to the beach alongside the house of the infamous Bert Potter, later to become a folk legend for his communal exploits in Albany.

My friend and fellow Glenfield teacher Chester had built the Westlake kiln a few years earlier and kindly included my pots in a firing.

I couldn’t get to the kiln opening, but the owner of a pottery shop in Karangahape Rd had been there and bought two of my pots.

As soon as I could, I raced into town and rummaged through the shop to find my pots and see what they looked like.

It was tremendously exciting. Of the two pots I got to keep, I still have one.

Bowl from 1971.

I still have that excitement today, every time I open the kiln.

These days that happens far more frequently, as my little suburban house has only room for a tiny electric kiln and we have to fire it often - recently up to three times a week.

In between the firings of 1971 and 2023 a lot has happened, not only on the pottery front.

But sticking to pottery - in 1975 I left teaching and bought several acres in Golden Bay.

Chester was once again part of a significant event when he drove the overloaded rented furniture truck from Auckland, carrying all my worldly possessions.

I beavered away as a potter in Onekaka, then in Waimea West, nearer to Nelson, for nearly 20 years.

Life ebbs and flows. Things never go the way you expect. Other interests, stresses and pressures led to me abandoning the life of a potter and entering the relative calm of another life, where someone paid me every week, gave me holidays, helped me with saving for my retirement and generally giving my life some structure.

I worked as a sub-editor in a newspaper for 22 years, longer than my pottery career.

I was never planning to go back to pottery, but after eight years of retirement everything changed.

Innocent beginnings, innocent conversations, kind friends - gradually I was sucked back in.

The paralysing excitement of opening the kiln has returned. So has the pressure.

Pottery is very hard to maintain on a part time basis.

You throw some pots and they start to dry. Suddenly they need trimming, or handles or spouts or lids or some other further work and they’re drying out rapidly - or maybe too slowly.

In the interim, you throw some more and suddenly you’re going like the clappers and pots start to pile up.

All this is costing money, so you have to make some sales, but how or where?

Suddenly we’ve found ourselves with commitments to galleries and exhibitions, deadlines too.

It’s tremendously exciting, but so far, it’s never mundane.

These two pots were glazed today.

Take a look at the two pots above. After I watched the exhilarating rugby game this morning between the All Blacks and Ireland, I went out and poured glaze over these two fat pots.

I planned to fire them tomorrow, but got them into the kiln by early afternoon. 

I couldn’t wait, so I switched the kiln on. It’s sitting somewhere at dull red heat now. What will they look like?

Maybe I’ll have to post again tomorrow with the results.

I feel so lucky to have such an intense interest in something at my advanced age.

My wife Cathie has clicked right in to this new interest. Website builder, photographer, media guru, display expert - there’s nothing she doesn’t do. And if you think I sound excited about opening the kiln tomorrow, you should see her.

You can keep up with recent developments on Cathie’s website: gibbspottery.com.

The Instagram page links to the website, so you can view the expanding portfolio of pots.

Another small publicity boost came courtesy of a story in the pages of the Nelson Mail on Friday. Check it out.

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Whisky, wine, coffee - you choose.

Yesterday we opened a kiln that included 60 of these little beakers. We’re giving them away at our opening at Wall to Wall Gallery in Bridge St Nelson at 5pm Thursday. That was an intensely exciting opening, as we had loads of pots and four of our friends helping scoop out the hot little devils with exclamations of joy and surprise. Needless to say. Now we only have 50 to give away, partly because I had my evening whisky in one too last night.